


Reflecting the Sad Truth

by FuryBeam136



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Character Study
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-14
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-21 21:00:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30027771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FuryBeam136/pseuds/FuryBeam136
Summary: He stares his reflection down in the bathroom mirror as if it will do anything but echo his own movements.
Kudos: 9





	Reflecting the Sad Truth

He stares his reflection down in the bathroom mirror as if it will do anything but echo his own movements. Gray eyes meet gray eyes, through thick layers of plastic lenses, and then trail across pale skin, over strands of dark hair. His face, his hair, his eyes, all staring at him with the same disappointment he feels, because they’re his. It’s a mirror. He will gain no meaningful insight from the mirror.

He averts his gaze from the mirror, to his shaking hands, to the water running from the tap, to the faint pink stains where he bled into the sink. He carefully swirls the water around as if it will remove them, will wash away the traces of where he’s been, of what’s happening. He has to be strong, for himself, for his friends. They expect him to be strong. So he hasn’t told them. How he’s clinging to the past, how it’s killing him. 

“ **You have to let it go,** ” Arsène whispers, his voice a pounding in his skull that pulses through his body in waves.

“No,” he breathes, and even the one word is choked out through his throat closing on him, the words he wants to say dying before they ever reach his tongue. He wants to scream, to cry, to tell his persona that he can’t let go of Joker. He wants to be Joker. He doesn’t want to go back to being the kid with everyone’s eyes on him, he doesn’t want to go back to hearing the whispers and seeing the stares out of the corners of his eyes.

“ **You’re not Joker anymore,** ” Arsène’s traitorous voice reminds him. “ **You’re frail. You’re mortal. You’re killing yourself trying to hold onto things that cannot last.** ”

And so what if he is? He looks back up and meets his own eyes, stares and stares into himself as though he will find an answer in those depths. In his own depths, endless and echoing, and a mystery even to himself.

“Arsène,” he breathes, and it comes out in a plea, choked by the taste of tears that has begun to fill his throat, and he feels like he’s drowning. “Arsène,” he begs, and he takes the glasses off, his mask, his disguise, his hiding place. “Arsène,” he cries, and his fingers find the place on his skin where the mask should be if he were still Joker, leader of the Phantom Thieves, tall and dark and handsome with that confident smirk and the feeling that everything might turn out okay, that he isn’t helpless.

Blood runs down his face and drips into the sink from where his fingernails have dug too far into his skin. He’s crying, he notes distantly, the taste of blood and tears beginning to mix in his throat in a nauseating cocktail. For the briefest of instants, he sees the flicker of blue flames, the rustle of black wings, the burning gaze of golden eyes in the mirror. And then he closes his eyes and his throat is closing up but he manages a strangled scream.

“ **Unchain yourself from me. You’re not Joker anymore.** ”

Head in his hands, the only sounds he can hear that of the rushing water still pouring from the tap and his heavy, gasping breaths. He breathes in deep. Slipping out alongside the exhale of breath, he murmurs, “I know.”

And Arsène’s voice becomes a memory.


End file.
